Gene Wilder

“I live in a small town in Connecticut, and they don't write scripts there, but I get them anyway because my agent is in Los Angeles.”

“If there's an audience, I think they're going to expect me to be funny. But what if I'm not funny? What if I fail?”

“I wanted to do - there was this film called 'Magic' that Anthony Hopkins did. And the director wanted me. The writer wanted me. Joe Levine said no, I don't want any comedians in this.”

“I feel very Jewish, and I feel very grateful to be Jewish. But I don't believe in God or anything to do with the Jewish religion.”

“The world is not based on fairness. Human beings can rise to fairness, can administer something that makes it fair or just. But that's not God.”

“The thing I love about making movies is the peace of mind that I know I don't have to be perfect the first time. I can be perfect the second time or the third time.”

“Success is a terrible thing and a wonderful thing. If you can enjoy it, it's wonderful. If it starts eating away at you, and they're waiting for more from me, or what can I do to top this, then you're in trouble. Just do what you love. That's all I want to do.”

“I'm going to tell you what my religion is. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Period. Terminato. Finito.”

“I know a lot of sad people who aren't comedians.”

“I'd like to do a comedy with Emma Thompson. I admire her as an actress so much. I love her. And I didn't know it until recently that her whole career started in comedy.”

“I'm funny on camera sometimes. In life, once in a while. Once in a while.”

“Whatever simplicity I've achieved in writing, I think I owe most of it to Jean Renoir and Hemingway: simple, declarative sentences. I've read some very good writers, but the sentences were so long that I've forgotten what the point was.”

“What good is a character who's always winking at the audience to let them in on the secret?”

“I said something really stupid once. I told a friend that my mother was so beautiful, but my dad was ugly. My dad heard it and just laughed it off, but I felt guilty. It haunted me for years. I should never have said that.”

“So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.”

“When you fall in love, and you're very young, you think that that's the love of your life. And maybe it is, but it usually doesn't turn out that way.”

“Actors fall into this trap if they missed being loved for who they really were and not for what they could do - sing, dance, joke about - then they take that as love.”

“I had a unique form: a Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.”

“We all grew up on movies with scenes where the actor is lying, and you know he's lying, but he wants to make sure you know it's a lie, and so he overacts and all but winks at you, and everybody in the world except for the girl he's talking to knows he's lying.”

“A lot of comic actors derive their main force from childish behavior. Most great comics are doing such silly things; you'd say, 'That's what a child would do.'”